New ideas and the hard work that put them into action are exactly what Africans know a lot about — especially when it comes to food production and feeding one’s family.

As the population increases across Africa and arable land becomes less, it is critical that governments and, more importantly, individual farmers have the most up to date information and data to maximize crop production.

Organizations at the center of crop research which teach new, practical, farming techniques to increase production at the grassroots level are worth their weight in food.

Here is what the average African farmer wants to know:
- How to improve maize production
- How to improve wheat production
- Knowledge of small scale irrigation and conservation tillage technology
- Information to improve post-harvest agro-processing and marketing
- How to improve crops such as rice, beans, and teff (high in dietary fiber and iron and providing protein and calcium)
- Capacity building for farmers' livelihood

These needs and the know-how to back them up were painstakingly researched, tested, and put into practice in Uganda and Ethiopia for use throughout Africa at the initiative and with the funding of the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA), and the Sasakawa Global 2000 (SG2000) Project.

African farmers in a SG2000 Project Field

The results and meticulous research data compiled from this project are available on-line for anyone around the world at http://sg2000ia.cimmyt.org/ from Sasakawa & Partners Impacts and CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre).

Norman E. Borlaug, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his lifetime work to feed a hungry world, worked with the Sasakawa Africa Association and SG 2000 over 20 years to increase food production in Africa. He is credited with saving more lives than any person who has ever lived.

Probably, Dr. Borlaug’s greatest achievement was his determined struggle to integrate the various streams of agricultural research into useful, viable technologies and to bring agricultural research advances to practical use in farmers’ fields. This is the heart of SG2000 and SAA project.

International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)

These needs and the know-how to back them up were painstakingly researched, tested, and put into practice in Uganda and Ethiopia for use throughout Africa at the initiative and with the funding of the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA), and the Sasakawa Global 2000 (SG2000) Project.

The results and meticulous research data compiled from this project are available on-line for anyone around the world at http://sg2000ia.cimmyt.org/ from Sasakawa & Partners Impacts and CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre).

Norman E. Borlaug, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his lifetime work to feed a hungry world, worked with the Sasakawa Africa Association and SG 2000 over 20 years to increase food production in Africa. He is credited with saving more lives than any person who has ever lived.

Probably, Dr. Borlaug’s greatest achievement was his determined struggle to integrate the various streams of agricultural research into useful, viable technologies and to bring agricultural research advances to practical use in farmers’ fields. This is the heart of SG2000 and SAA project.

Sasakawa Global 2000

Over the past 23 years, the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA) and its partner, the Global 2000 program of the Carter Center, have worked – under the name SG 2000 – with tens of thousands of frontline extension workers and several million farmers in 14 sub-Saharan Africa countries. The main focus of that work was to test and promote higher-yielding technology for maize, wheat, rice, grain legumes, and roots and tubers.

The new technologies promoted by SG 2000 programs were developed by African national research organizations in collaboration with international agricultural research centers. SG 2000’s role has been a huge catalytic one, working primarily with national ministries of agriculture to mount dynamic field demonstration programs so that farmers can evaluate for themselves the value of these improved technologies.

Although the SG 2000’s projects are located in a widespread area of countries, their main approach to the small farmers’ problems is similar. Before launching a new project, SG 2000 determines if there is a) a pool of appropriate technology that could have a significant impact for a particular country, b) if the citizens are poor, c) the country food insecure, and d) if the government is committed to agricultural development.

The challenge of SAA’s Agroprocessing Programme is to enhance and prove the economical viability of rural agroprocessing and -- crucially -- to link agriculture to the urban market.

Long range benefits of these various project components for the future of African agriculture are:

-- development of a data base that can be used as a sample of farm households
-- faster communication of scientific results and policy implications through the project website
-- increased capacity building for users, particularly farmers at the grassroots level

"We believe that small-scale agroprocessing offers huge opportunities to stimulate the activity in rural areas and that this potential is still virtually untapped," said Toshiro Mado, SAA’s agroprocessing program leader, in an interview in Tokyo at the Nippon Foundation, which supports SAA and SG 2000 activities.